Page 103 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

82 � mAnAgIng the moBIle workForCe

People on real teams must trust and depend on one another—not
totally or forever—but certainly with respect to the team’s purpose,
performance goals, and approach. For most of us such trust and inter-
dependence do not come easily; it must be earned and demonstrated
repeatedly if it is to change behavior.” 12
Trusting people means allowing yourself to become vulnerable to
their actions and the consequences of their actions. Your employees
take the risk that you will do what you say and do what they expect
leaders with integrity to do—that you’ll pay them what you prom-
ised, that you’ll be fair in distributing rewards for work that is ac-
complished, that you’ll stay on the right side of the law and ethical
behavior, and that you’ll look out for their best interests. You take the
risk with employees that they are doing the work they say they’re do-
ing, that they are not selling company secrets to competitors, and that
they are fully sharing information not only with you but also with the
rest of the members of your team.
So, a good deal of the development of trust depends upon how
much risk each of the members is willing to take on—how vulnerable
they will allow themselves to become. If the risks are low, people are
more willing to take them. If they are high—perhaps when people are
dealing with sensitive information—people have to thoroughly assess
how trustworthy they believe the other party is before trusting them.
When Stephen M. R. Covey talks about extending trust in a virtual
environment he is talking about taking risks in a thoughtful way.

trustworthiness
To build trust, especially with a team of people located anywhere on
the planet, you have to be trustworthy. Lisa Haneberg, in Focus Like
a Laser Beam, says, “If you are not trustworthy, you will have trouble
engaging your team, and both focus and results will suffer. . . . When
employees feel they cannot trust you, they hold back because they
don’t want to get burned for caring about the business. Intimacy and
trust feed each other. When you trust someone, you share yourself.
When you share yourself, you build trust.” 13